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From: hascall@atanasoff.cs.iastate.edu (John Hascall)
Newsgroups: comp.arch,comp.misc,comp.lang.misc,comp.protocols.misc
Subject: When is RISC not RISC?
Message-ID: <747@atanasoff.cs.iastate.edu>
Date: 30 Jan 89 20:55:04 GMT
References: <170@microsoft.UUCP> <4008@hubcap.UUCP>
Organization: Iowa State U. Computer Science Department, Ames, IA
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  In response to someone proposing adding instructions to a RISC
  machine, I wrote:
 
>>  Here it is again, adding instructions to a RISC machine... won't
>>  be long before we have a RISC machine with more instructions
>>  than a VAX.... :-)

  And was "corrected" by someone* thusly:
   
> And again...
> Sigh, RISC doesn't mean a small number of instructions.  RISC means....

   REDUCED Instruction Set Computer (i.e., a reduced number of instructions)

   True, many RISC machine incorporate a number of other feature, which
   because they have been used by a number of RISC machines, have come to
   considered a part of RISC--but there is no reason that these feature
   could not be part of a CISC machine (other than chip real-estate).

   I think the real problem here is a poorly named acronym, but it
   probably sounded "cute" (I, for one, am quite tired of papers
   titled "A RISCy blah blah blah" etc).

   Perhaps we could have a new buzzword contest, how about SOC (simple,
   orthogonal computer)?

   My $.02 (or less) worth,
   John Hascall
   ISU Comp Center

   * My apologies for losing the attribution above, but rn barfed on the
     overly long "References:" field and I had to do this by hand.